Permanent regret (full text)

I'm in my ninth year. In the past seven or eight decades, from the countryside to the city; From home to abroad; From primary school, middle school, university to foreign research institute; From "be determined to learn" to "do what you want without exceeding the moment", the song "There is no way to recover from doubts" and "a village with a bright future". Joy and sadness go hand in hand, disappointment and hope. I have had many experiences in Qi Fei. If you want to talk about regrets, you can find them everywhere. To choose the deepest, truest and most unforgettable regret, that is, the permanent regret, is also within reach, because it has never left my heart for a moment.

My eternal regret is that I should never have left my hometown and my mother.

I was born in an extremely poor village in northwest Shandong. Our family is poor among the poor, and it can really be said that there is no place for poverty. During the ten-year catastrophe, I jumped out to oppose the perverse but hot "Lafayette" of Peking University, which was regarded as a thorn in her side and I was determined to get rid of it quickly. Her minions have twice fled to my hometown, deliberately "beating" me into a landlord, and their arrogant teachers have not frightened my villagers. When I was a child, a partner pointed to their noses and said loudly, "If the whole official village is allowed to complain, Ji Xianlin's family is the first!"

this sentence is not exaggerated, he is telling the truth. My grandparents died early, leaving my father and other three brothers alone and helpless. The youngest uncle gave it to someone. My father and my uncle were so hungry that they had to go to someone else's jujube forest to pick up dried dates that fell to the ground to satisfy their hunger. This is certainly not a long-term solution. Finally, the two brothers were forced to leave their homes and went to Jinan to make a living. At this time, they are only in their teens and twenties. In a big city where there are no friends, it must have been through hardships that Uncle Jiu settled down in Jinan. So my father went back to his hometown, saying that he was a farmer, but he had no land to farm. It must have gone through a lot of hardships. Uncle Jiu sometimes sends some money home from Jinan, on which his father lives. Somehow, I found (read Ruoxin) a daughter-in-law, who is my mother. My mother's maiden name is Zhao, and her family is as poor as ours, otherwise she would never get married. She has no food at home, so she has no money or leisure to go to school. So my mother didn't know a word, lived all her life and didn't even have a name. Her home is in another village, five miles away from our village. This five-mile road is the longest distance my mother has traveled in her life.

I, the man in Peking University who is trying to be a "landlord" by Lafayette, was born in such a family and had such a mother.

later, I heard that our family was indeed "rich" for a while. About the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Jiu Shu used the last fifty cents left in his pocket to buy a tenth of the Hubei flood lottery ticket and won the prize. The two brothers discussed that they should "return to their hometown with wealth" and go home to raise their eyebrows and spit. So he shipped the money home, and Jiu Shu still stayed in the city. His father made arrangements for the village. He bought bricks and tiles and built a house at an absurd price. And bought a field with a well at a ridiculous price. At that time, I was excited and really proud. It's a pity that the good times didn't last long, and my father used absurd and bizarre ways, like Song Jiang, to entertain friends from all over the world. In a flash, the built tile house was demolished to sell bricks and tiles. Fields with wells have also changed their owners. The whole family has returned to the original situation. It was at this time that I was born into the world under such circumstances.

of course, my mother experienced this great change personally. Unfortunately, when I lived with my mother, I was only a few years old. Tell me, I don't understand either. Therefore, our family suddenly rose and fell this time, just like a flash in the pan, and I still don't fully understand it. I'm afraid this mystery will become an eternal mystery.

in any case, our family has returned to the old poverty situation. Later, it was said that our family had only half an acre of land at that time. I don't know how this half acre of land came from. A family of three lives on this half acre. Of course, Uncle Jiu in the city will give some help, but things like the Central Hubei Flood Award are not rare once in a lifetime. Uncle Jiu doesn't have much money to help his brother.

I'm too young to tell you how I live at home. Anyway, I ate very badly, which I know. According to the standards at that time, eating "white" (referring to wheat flour) was the highest, followed by eating millet flour or stick flour cakes, and the last time eating red sorghum cakes, which were red in color, like pig liver. "White" has nothing to do with our family. "Yellow" (the color of millet flour or cake is yellow) has little fate with us. Only the "red" people spend all their time with each other. This "red" is bitter and astringent, which is really hard to swallow. But if I don't eat, I'm hungry. I'm really a little red.

However, children also have their own ways. My grandfather's cousin is a juren, and his wife I call her grandma. Their branch is rich and has land. Although juren is dead, his family is still very good. My great grandmother is still alive. Her own grandson died early, so she devoted all her love to me. She is one of the few people in the whole official village who can eat "white". She not only eats by herself, but also sets aside half or a quarter of a white-flour bun for me every day. I wake up every morning and immediately jump off the kang and run to the village. Our family lives outside the village. I ran to grandma and shouted, "grandma!" " She immediately smiled from ear to ear, put her hand back to her fat sleeve, took out a small bun from her pocket and handed it to me. This was the happiest moment of my day.

in addition, I can eat a little "white" occasionally, which I earned with my own labor. When it comes to the summer wheat harvest season, our family has nothing to harvest at all. My aunt and sister-in-law in Ningjia, who live across the street-their family is also extremely poor-took me to the rich fields in our village or other villages to "pick up wheat". The so-called "picking up wheat" means that other long-term workers have cut wheat, and there will always be a little bit of wheat ears left. These are not worth picking up, so we poor people come to "pick up". Because there will never be much left, we picked up half a basket for a long time, but for us, it is already a treasure. My aunt and aunt must have taken special care of me. A child of four or five years old or five or six years old can pick up ten catties and eight catties of wheat for a summer. These are all rubbed out by my mother. In order to reward me, after the wheat season, my mother would grind the wheat into flour, steam it into steamed buns, or paste it into white flour cakes to satisfy my appetite. So I ate my fill. I remember one year, my performance in picking wheat may be a bit "extraordinary". On the Mid-Autumn Festival-farmers call it "August 15th"-my mother got some moon cakes from somewhere and broke a piece for me, so I squatted next to a stone and ate. At that time, for me, moon cakes were really magical things, and dragon liver and phoenix marrow were hard to match. I seldom ate them once. I didn't pay attention to whether my mother was eating. Looking back now, she didn't eat a bite at all. Not only moon cakes, but also other "white" ones, which my mother never tasted, were left for me to eat. She probably spent her whole life with red sorghum cakes. In the lean year, you can't even eat this, so you have to eat wild vegetables.

as for meat, the memory of eating seems to be blank. Next door to my mother's house is a workshop selling boiled beef. The old ox, who has worked hard for farmers all his life, can't plow any more when he is old, so several farmers buy it at a very low price, kill it in an extremely barbaric way, boil the meat and sell it. Old beef is hard to cook, and there is really no way. Farmers urinate in the meat pot, so the meat is rotten. Farmers are kind-hearted. With this situation, they tell their neighbors: "Don't buy meat today!" My mother's family is poor. Although I love my grandson very much, I can only use earthen pots, spend a few dollars to make money, and put a jar of beef soup. Talking is better than nothing. I remember once, there was an extra cow belly in the jar, which became my patent. I couldn't bear to eat it all at once, so I cut it piece by piece with a rusty little iron knife and ate it slowly. This piece of tripe can really be compared with moon cakes.

"white", moon cakes and tripe are rare. How about "yellow"? "Yellow" is also rare. However, although I am only a few years old, I have figured out a way. In spring, summer and autumn, the grass and crops are growing outside the village. I will mow the grass outside the village, or chop sorghum leaves in other people's sorghum fields. Splitting sorghum leaves is not only forbidden by the landowner, but also welcomed; Because when the leaves are split, the ventilation can be improved, the sorghum can grow better and the grain can be beaten more. Grass and sorghum leaves are for cattle. Our family is poor and we have never raised cattle. My second uncle's family has land and often keeps two big cows. My grass and sorghum leaves are for them. Whenever I, a child less than three pieces of tofu, walk into the gate of the second uncle with a big bundle of grass or sorghum leaves on my back, I feel confident and not afraid. If I put the grass in the cowshed, I will always get a "yellow" meal and will not be "rolled up" by the second aunt (in our local dialect, it means "scolding"). When it comes to the Chinese New Year, I feel in my heart that in the past year, I have made great achievements in feeding cows and have the courage to go to the second uncle's house to eat yellow flour cakes. Yellow flour cake is steamed with yellow wheat and dates. Although the color is yellow, it ranks above the "white", because it is only eaten once a year during the New Year, and things are rare, so the yellow flour cake is expensive.

all I said above was food. Why do you talk about food when you talk about your mother? The reason is not complicated. First, as a child, I care about food easily. Second, almost all the delicious things I mentioned above have nothing to do with my mother. Except for the "yellow", she is not related to anything else. I stayed by her side until I was six years old, and then I went home twice for a short time. Now that I recall, even my mother's face is blurred, without a clear outline. In particular, I find it difficult and easy to understand: I can't recall my mother's smile anyway. She seems to have never smiled in her life. Her family was poor and her son was far away. She suffered a lot. Where did the smile come from? Once I went home and listened to my aunt Ning, who was opposite, tell me, "Your mother often said,' If I had known I would never let him go!'" "How much bitterness and sadness is contained in a short sentence! Mother doesn't know how many days and nights, looking far away, looking forward to her son's return! However, this son never returned until his mother left this world.

I was at a loss about this situation at first, and I didn't understand it deeply. By the time I went to high school, I was a few years older and gradually understood. However, relying on others, the economy can't be independent, and I have empty ambitions, so I can't achieve it. I secretly made up my mind and made a vow: once I graduated from college, I found a job and immediately welcomed my mother. However, before I graduated from college, my mother left me, forever and ever. The walls of this cell have been papered with white paper. Although it has been out of date for a long time, the papering has turned dark yellow, and there are several leaking places, and large black spots have appeared. However, with the sunlight coming in, or the bright electric light coming on, the room still looks white and dazzling. Two glass windows were opened to the sky, and the light and air were not bad. Aim at that window, there is a rectangular desk in black paint near the stone wall in the room, on which there are some thick books and ink box. There is a short bamboo chair with sawed feet at the table; Then behind the bamboo chair, there is an iron bed; The bed was covered with a gray military blanket and a coarse cotton quilt, which was folded three times and placed neatly on the inner edge of the bed. In the inner corner of this room, there is an unpainted and uncovered white wooden box, and there is another toilet hidden in the wooden box, with its mouth open day and night, to bear the filth excreted by prisoners in this room every day. In front of the white wooden box, near the wall, there is a blue magnetic spittoon, which, like a game with a toilet, is also open day and night, bearing the phlegm and tears spit out by the prisoners in the room and the orange peel bagasse and paper scraps thrown down. Suddenly ran into this room, if you didn't see the ugly white wooden box and the xiangsong sitting at the table, who was nailed with iron chains and knew as a prisoner at first sight, or you would think that this was not a cell, but a study room.

Indeed, even Xiang Song, who was confined in this room, thought it was better than the room in the school he lived in when he was studying in the provincial capital ten years ago. This is a room in the detention center's preferential treatment number. This detention center is divided into two parts, one is the preferential number and the other is the ordinary number. The preferential number is to give preferential treatment to those who have political status or assets. They have committed various crimes for various reasons, and they will also be punished by law; And their daily life and their bodies can't stand the same treatment as the ordinary number; Put them in the ordinary number, too, not for a day or two, maybe they will all get sick or die of illness, which is absolutely unacceptable. Therefore, the special preferential treatment for them is nothing more than expecting them to repent as soon as possible. Therefore, it is more appropriate to say that the preferential treatment number is not so much a prison, or rather a rest home, but it is not free to enter and leave. Compared with the wet and filthy ordinary number, it's a big difference. Prisoners who are suffering and sick in the ordinary number suddenly see the cleanliness and spaciousness of the preferential number, and there is always a feeling of heaven and hell in their hearts. Because Xiangsong is an important political prisoner, the official hall moved him from the ordinary number to the preferential number in order to quickly change his original socialist beliefs. Xiangsong lived with three companions in the ordinary ship before, and it was quite easy to live by talking about it. Now that I'm alone, it's rather lonely for Zhenri to sit in this cell. He can't smoke or drink, and he can't do it if he wants to relax himself by smoking or by drinking. The only thing that can make him forget everything is reading. He borrowed a lot of books from his fellow inmates. He used to love reading. As soon as he had enough books to read, even the ten-catty iron chains nailed to his feet didn't feel how heavy it was. Especially now, the book seems to be a morphine needle in the doctor's hand to relieve pain. When he reads the book, he sees it with relish and forgets his mental depression and physical pain paralytically. After all, his brain power is limited. After reading books for several hours in succession, his head will swell and ache for a while. He puts a pair of elbows on the table and hugs the swollen head with two palms, or looks at it as it is, gritting his teeth and saying to himself, "Do your best! It hurts! It hurts again! Cerebral hemorrhage, faint! " It was not until the brain pain was so severe that he couldn't stand it any longer that he left his book and stood up at the table. Or fall down on the iron bed, spread your limbs straight, close your eyes and recuperate; Or walking indoors from the inside to the outside and from the outside to the inside; Or stand by the window and look at that small piece of dreary rainy day outside the window; I also successfully looked at the willow tree with half dead branches and half green leaves outside the fence. As soon as he saw the cluster of thick green willow leaves, he guessed that the trees all over the earth probably grew bright green leaves in the warm spring breeze-he seemed to get a little spring from here. He lives like this every day. Today, when the shift guard pushed open the door to look at him-the most important prisoner in the shift-he saw Xiangsong not reading or pacing. He was sitting at the table, propping his head with his left hand and sticking his pen on the paper with his right hand.